whatever works . . . .

For yeas, I have been a dedicated listener to National Public Radio for its political news and analysis. Last Friday, I was listening to the weekly “news roundup” on The Diane Rehm Show. As I listened to two of the guests parse the legalities of what this president can get away with, I became more and more frustrated. Finally, Ms. Rehm took a phone call from US Congressmember Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), who echoed my sentiments with great conviction.

In response to the show, I went the following email. I attempted to send copies to Ms. Rehm’s guests, but I have not yet found their email addresses.

Just a note here. Diane's guests were Doyle McManus of the LA times, Tod Lindberg of The Hoover Institution out of Stanford University, and Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine. The majority of my comments are directed twoards Mr. McManus and Mr. Lindberg.


Diane,

I am a regular listener, and I love your show. You are a true voice of reason in political talk radio.

As I was listening to the Friday news Roundup and I must admit I was truly amazed by the mental opacity of your guests, particularly Doyle McManus and Tod Lindberg.

While I am not a credentialed journalist or an expert on Washington politics, the duplicity of this president has been clear since he claimed a strong faith in God in one breath and referred to Adam Clymer as an "asshole" in the next.

Based solely on what I was seeing on cable news and hearing on public radio shows like yours, I knew that the case for war was a bogus one. Even though I initially found Colin Powell's case before the United Nations to be a convincing one, I always knew that the Bush Administration was only telling a very selective truth at best.

This administration has demonstrated a clear pattern of deceptive behavior throughout its tenure. When one argument or justification fails, they float another. When that doesn't work, they try another and so on until something sticks.

With the invasion of Iraq, the President told us it was about ousting a cruel dictator, about liberating the iraqi people, about a link between the Hussein regime and al-Qaeda, and finally about a nuclear threat. Only the first justification was true--we ousted a cruel dictator. Liberation for the Iraqis, at this point, is arguable.

With Katrina, we were first told that no one in the federal government anticipated the levee breach. We now know that was false, and the administration is now attempting to split hairs over the terminology, that they only knew the levees might be "topped."

With the NSA wiretapping program. In 2002, the Justice Department said that the FISA court was working smoothly for them. In 2004, the President delivered a speech in which he clearly stated that, with regards to wiretaps, he was "talking about getting a court order before we do so." When the New york Times broke the NSA story, their first attempt was to attack whomever leaked the story. They then tried to argue that the program did not violate FISA by attempting to draw a bogus distinction between international and domestic phone traffic. Then, Attorney General Gonzales attempted to argue that the use of force resolution passed by the Congress in the wake of September 2001 authorized the President to conduct this surveillance on Americans. Then the President tried to claim that FISA was an outdated law, written in 1978, failing to mention that the law has been updated as recently as 2004. The latest tactic is to claim that the President has acted within the powers inherent in his office. Let's backtrack a moment. If the President was truly acting within the limits of his Constitutional authority, why did the Attorney General find it necessary to make the Congressional authorization argument? Why not simply state that Mr. Bush was acting within his inherent powers to begin with?

Diane, there are so many other examples of this White House dancing and doublespeak. I could write a book, and I would, except John W Dean has already done it.

With regards to Mr. McManus and Mr. Lindberg, I cannot understand how they can continue to parse legal definitions. I cannot understand their lack of critical thinking on these matters despite all of the evidence that something is seriously wrong in Washington DC. It truly seems that these gentlemen and so many others who are so deeply entrenched in the mainstream analysis of political matters refuse to acknowledge the severity of the current political crisis in this country.

The Plame affair is only one of many examples. It looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flaps like a duck, swims like a duck, smells like a duck, and even tastes like a duck. Still, I am hearing from the mainstream punditry that it might not be a duck quite yet.

Mr. McManus may wish to assert, as he did with Congressmember Abercrombie, that I am making a passionate argument from my "side of the aisle." I must admit that, with regards to that specific comment, I really expected better of Mr. McManus than to engage in such crass partisan spin.

I realize that for many in his profession, political analysis is akin to sports commentary. Clearly, for Congressmember Abercrombie, government is not a game and the Constitution is more than a simple rule book. For the men, women, and children who have been killed or injured in Iraq since our invasion, this is certainly no sparring match. And the current rumblings about a US military strike in Iran are certainly more than the formulation of a game plan.

I would suggest that your guests spend some time outside of their offices, listening to ordinary Americans discuss their very passionate feelings about this President's personal and political ethics (never mind the legalities) in taking us to war. Your guests might find that no amount of spin or "informed analysis" can dispel the common sense truth. What we have here is definitely a duck.

Listen to audio clip.